Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Letters in Somerville, MA

A city that rents, in houses built for other purposes

Somerville has 35,715 occupied homes and 23,483 of them are rented: 65.8%, against 37.5% across Massachusetts, on the 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimate.

Most of that housing began life as two- and three-family homes and has been divided, renovated and re-let more times than anyone has recorded. Leases here often carry terms inherited from a previous owner, including pet clauses that the current landlord may not have thought about since they bought the building.

Do not wait on the city’s process

Somerville has a Human Rights Commission, and its stated mission is about eliminating unlawful discrimination as part of the city’s racial and social justice work.

When this page was researched, the section of that commission’s site headed for complaints did not present a working housing discrimination route, the text underneath it dealt with accessibility forms rather than a complaint process.

There is no criticism intended in saying so. It is a practical warning. A renter with a refused assistance animal and a 300-day deadline should not spend weeks waiting for a municipal channel to open. File where the jurisdiction is certain.

The two doors that definitely work

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination takes housing complaints directly. Its deadline, at 804 CMR 1.04(3), is 300 days from the alleged unlawful conduct, with the period commencing when you “knew or should have known of the claim of discrimination”.

HUD takes them too, on a one-year clock.

Both are free. Neither requires a lawyer. And under M.G.L. c. 151B § 9, filing at the Commission first is what preserves three years to bring a civil action rather than one.

What you are actually asking for

Massachusetts has no emotional support animal statute. The right comes from M.G.L. c. 151B § 4(7A)(2), which makes it discrimination to refuse

“reasonable accommodations in rules, policies, practices, or services, when such accommodations may be necessary to afford a handicapped person equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.”

Note the breadth of “rules, policies, practices”. A clause typed into a lease in 1994 is a rule. An unwritten habit of refusing dogs is a practice. Both are inside the statute, which is useful in a city where the paperwork has been through several owners.

The link to animals came from the MCAD Full Commission in 2024: assistance animals cover animals “whether such animals are trained or untrained”, and an emotional support animal is “just one kind of assistance animal”.

An inherited clause is still enforceable, and still exceptable

Tenants sometimes assume an old lease term carries less weight. It does not, and neither does it carry more.

What changes with an inherited clause is the conversation. An owner enforcing a rule they did not write and do not especially believe in is often the easiest accommodation to obtain, provided the request is specific: an exception to this clause, for this reason, with a supporting letter attached.

If the reply is still no, the written request has done its second job. It is the document that starts the legal timeline, and MCAD’s position is that “it is the initial request for an accommodation which triggers the obligation to participate in the interactive process.”

Money at the start of the tenancy

M.G.L. c. 186 § 15B(1)(b) lists what a landlord may require at or before the start of a tenancy: “rent for the first full month of occupancy”, “rent for the last full month of occupancy calculated at the same rate as the first month”, “a security deposit equal to the first month’s rent” and “the purchase and installation cost for a key and lock”.

An animal charge is not among them, for anyone. In a market where renovated two-families change hands often, an unlawful pet deposit is frequently a copied clause rather than a considered demand, which usually means it disappears once challenged in writing.

The recurring version needs the other argument: for an approved assistance animal, the Office on Disability states that providers “cannot impose breed/weight restrictions or pet-fees/deposits/insurance requirements”.

Neighbours, thin floors and what is not a defence

Shared entryways and audible floors are Somerville housing, not legal grounds. A neighbour’s objection does not justify refusing an accommodation.

What can: undue hardship, evidenced against the provider’s resources, or the conduct of your specific animal: a real injury, real damage. If the concern is noise, the lawful response is to deal with the noise, in the same way a landlord would with any tenant.

The exemption that will not help most landlords here

M.G.L. c. 151B § 4(7) does not reach the leasing of one apartment in an owner-occupied two-family dwelling. Somerville has plenty of two-families, so the exemption comes up.

It stops there, though. A three-family is outside it. A landlord living elsewhere is outside it. And 804 CMR 2.01(4) claws it back where the tenant receives public assistance or a rental subsidy, where a real estate professional was used, or where the advertising was discriminatory.

Documentation worth sending

A letter from someone who treats you, saying that you have a condition and that the animal is needed because of it. No diagnosis required, no records, no medication list.

What the state warns against is the shortcut: “a letter or certificate bought from a website after a short interview is not considered sufficient documentation.” A purchased certificate turns a straightforward request into a credibility argument you did not need to have.

Three timetables, in plain numbers

MCAD: 300 days from the conduct, with the discovery rule that starts the count when you knew or should have known.

HUD: one year.

Court: three years if you filed with the Commission first, one year if you did not, under M.G.L. c. 151B § 9. There is no exhaustion requirement in housing, so the choice is real and it is easy to make badly.

Diary all three the day you make the request, not the day you get a refusal. Write the earliest of those dates on the same page as your request. In a city where the process you might have used locally is not currently available, the state deadline is the only one protecting you, and nothing about a municipal delay extends it.

What a refusal should be asked to explain

If the answer is no, ask for the reason in writing and ask which of the two lawful grounds it rests on, hardship, or something about the animal itself.

Most refusals name neither. They name a policy, an insurer, or a general worry about untrained animals, which the Commission has already described as “hyperbolic” when it was argued at length. A refusal without a stated lawful ground is not a weaker case for you. It is a stronger one.

Free help, and the public housing case

Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services, part of Greater Boston Legal Services, covers this city from 60 Gore Street and takes housing work for low income residents.

If your home is Somerville Housing Authority property, add one document to the request. 760 CMR 6.03 defines a Pet for state-aided public housing and exempts only “a service animal which is specially trained to assist an individual with a disability in specific activities of daily living”; Public Housing Notice 2023-01 then directs local housing authorities to handle assistance animals through the reasonable accommodation process instead.